


Fool's Gold

by FloraStuart



Category: White Collar
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-17
Updated: 2012-11-17
Packaged: 2017-11-18 20:36:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/565029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FloraStuart/pseuds/FloraStuart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the real thing is overrated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fool's Gold

**Author's Note:**

> Written for run_the_con. Thank you to Elrhiarhodan for the lovely prompt!

Neal Caffrey has been in her house less than a week when June starts to wonder if she’s made a mistake.

They’ve known each other only a few days but they speak the same language; she’s missed even talking to someone who understands her memories of this life, the uncertainty and heady exhilaration of it all, the glamour and the grief. She senses he’s as lonely as she is; it didn’t take him long to work his way into her heart, like a wary feral kitten coming in from the cold.

She doesn’t mind him borrowing the Jag, even if he didn’t ask first. (Even if it was to go walk in on a killer and hope like hell the feds showed up before Hagan shot him.) 

And she doesn’t mind driving to a greenhouse outside his radius to buy half a dozen potted palms in the middle of February, or spending half the next afternoon stringing fairy lights and trying to get that damn heater to work right, shifting half the furniture around to turn her balcony into a miniature version of a beach in Belize, all while clouds mass like charcoal smears overhead and the wind whispers threats of snow. (The fed _did_ show up in time, and Neal _didn’t_ get shot, so she supposes she owes him something.)

And it’s just the sort of grandly ridiculous gesture Byron would have loved. She tells Neal she hasn’t had this much fun in years as they share a bottle of wine that night, sitting before the fire in the snug wood-paneled back parlor. And she means it. She doesn’t even mind helping him take it all down and put everything away again once Burke and his wife have left, though Neal insists she didn’t have to.

But it isn’t only Neal she’s invited into her home. 

Neal comes to her with a raft of forms and paperwork, delivered over the course of three or four days by a parade of well-meaning young agents, few of whom can resist lecturing her about the dangers of good-looking young con men out to take advantage of rich old widows like herself. (Either they haven’t finished running the background check on her, or they’ve got the idea into their heads that Byron conned her somehow.) Living with a felon on tenuous parole means giving up to his handlers a significant degree of her own personal privacy; it’s nothing new to her, of course, but she’d almost forgotten how infuriatingly intrusive it all is.

Agent Burke seems polite, and decent enough as parole officers go. But Agent Burke is on vacation for the next two weeks while the details and all the paperwork of Neal’s housing arrangement are made official, and law enforcement or no she thinks some of his younger colleagues need a lecture or two on proper behavior in someone else’s home.

They impress on her the risks, over and over, speaking in grave tones; they go on for interminable lengths about the importance of setting firm standards of behavior and clear boundaries, in language uncomfortably like that used by her dog trainer.

She’s tempted to say _I think he has more than enough boundaries in his life already, and I don’t intend to add to them._

She’s tired of agents barely older than her granddaughter trying to convince her Neal is dangerous, as if in nearly half a century on the wrong side of the law she hasn’t learned, yet, how to spot a violent criminal or someone out to scam her.

She doesn’t say _it’s adorable, the way you all think I’m on your side._

Neal is picking out a slow melody on the piano when they hear the third knock in as many days. It’s snowing by now; she hears the two agents stamping snow off their feet in the foyer before the housekeeper escorts them into the front parlor.

The music stops when Neal notices one of the men staring at him. June suppresses a smile as he leaves the bench to prowl slowly around the edges of the room, first peering out the window at the snowflakes frosting the sidewalks and then ostentatiously examining the paintings on the walls.

Neal’s attention is caught by the two paintings hanging just above the mantel, early French impressionist landscapes of summer green. The agents are both staring at him, now, and she has to repeat her question twice before one of them hears her.

She doesn’t say _could you please pay attention, here?_

“Are you assessing the value of my paintings, Agent Jackson?” she asks smoothly, just to see his reaction. The other agent blinks, startled, finally looking at her. Across the room she sees Neal’s shoulders twitch.

She doesn’t say _Neal, darling, stop teasing the poor boys._

“No, ma’am!” He looks abruptly flustered and June tries not to smile. He means well. They all do, she knows, but they are all so very, very young. “But - I - _he_ is!”

Jackson directs what he probably thinks is a fierce stare at Neal’s back, as Neal stands on tiptoe and leans in closer, peering at the bottom edge of the canvas. “I know all about guys like him. He’s a fake and a fraud. And he can take one look at a painting like that and know what he’ll get for it on the black market. He’s probably planning a way to steal it right now.”

“I sincerely doubt that,” she says, and Neal turns to catch her eye, fighting a smile of his own.

“You need to be careful, Mrs. Ellington.”

She smiles and resists the urge to pat his hand; if he thinks she’s a sweet old widow who needs to be protected from men like Neal, he’s not nearly as good at spotting frauds and disguises as he thinks he is.

By the time she’s finished reading everything, the snow has turned to freezing rain, diamond-slick ice sheathing her front steps; she signs what she needs to sign and sends the agents on their way with paper cups full of hot chocolate. Neal is leaning against the cold fireplace when she returns to the parlor.

“You know they’re forgeries,” he says, nodding at the two paintings over the mantel, once the front door closes and they’re alone.

“My husband’s work,” she says. “You have good eyes.”

“This is what I do.” And there’s that grin again. “He was good.”

“He was.” She runs her fingers along the bottom of the frame. “Fool’s gold, he called them.” She gives Neal a wistful smile. “He did these maybe a month after they let him out the first time. He was still on parole, then, so he couldn’t go near the museum where they kept the real ones, couldn’t even get close enough to case the place. But he said someday he’d get them for me.”

“What happened?” Neal asks softly.

“I told him I’d rather have these.” It seemed like a sentimental indulgence, at the time, but now she’s glad she kept them; like the dull tarnished costume jewelry in the back of her armoire, she treasures these more than any of the priceless originals hanging in the hall. “Sometimes the real thing is overrated.”

Neal doesn’t speak for a long moment. Outside she can hear the whisper of sleet falling like tiny claws on the sidewalk. Usually, after the feds have been here Neal wants to be alone; she remembers this from when Byron got out the first time, and she knows after four years on the inside what he needs most is patience, and respect, and _space._

But he hasn’t retreated yet, this time; he’s still leaning against the hearth, and she senses something uncertain in him.

“That bottle upstairs has a story,” she says at last, probing gently. It’s not a question unless he wants it to be; she’s not going to push him, if he’s not ready to talk. But he takes a deep breath and the shadows leave his eyes, replaced by a desperate determination, and oh God, he too is so impossibly young.

“It’s a promise,” he says softly, and for a second he’s somewhere else; his eyes are wide and open and vulnerable, reflecting a tangled mix of pain and hope, loneliness and longing. “One I mean to keep.”

She knows he won’t be here long. He’s intent on his own goals and those aren’t helping the feds put his former compatriots behind bars. He wants a home; she can see it in the way he stares into the fire, those nights when he joins her in the back parlor, settling into Byron’s old chair like he belongs there; she sees it whenever he lets himself relax a little more with her. But more than a home he needs someone to build it with, and that someone isn’t here.

She can only shelter him as long as he’ll let her, and hold the retreat when he needs to run.

“You’ll find her,” she says at last. Someday, if there’s any mercy in this world, he’ll find his Kate and they’ll take off and make a home on the coast of France somewhere. And June _knows_ no matter how lavishly stocked their wine cellar is thirty years from now, Kate will cherish that empty bottle over any of the others. 

(When they had nothing Byron gave her glass diamonds and painted gold and promises, and she wouldn’t trade any of them for all the treasure in the world.)

“But not tonight.” She reaches out and squeezes his arm gently. “Let’s make a fire and have hot chocolate. I happen to know Helen made cookies this afternoon.”

It’s going to be a cold, wet, ice-slick afternoon; in a few hours it will be dark, and she’s suddenly grateful Neal is here. She doesn’t think they’ll see any more feds today, in this weather, and it’s not a night to be alone.

He looks up and she knows the light in his eyes; she’s seen it in Byron’s. It means he’s making a plan. “How about we fill up that bottle and I’ll tell you the story?”


End file.
